Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Untangling Marx: Present Dominating the Past Versus Past Dominating the Present


In Carl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, Marx makes a claim about the bourgeois and Communist societies: “In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society the present dominates the past” (171). This statement is not extremely clear, but by examining the text surrounding this statement I came to understand Marx’s meaning in this statement. Marx is saying that bourgeois society is a cycle of struggle and that the drive to create more and more capitol will take precedence over the life of the living worker. He then says that Communism would break this cycle of struggle and bring more importance to the laborer than to creating capitol. 
Marx states, “In bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase accumulated labour” (171). In bourgeois society the living laborer is the “present” that Marx refers to and the accumulated labour is the “past”. The drive for more accumulated labor dominates the living laborer. Marx says, “We want to do away with the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital” (171). The accumulated labor, or capitol, is more important than the present laborer. The laborer is only there to increase this capitol. This supports the idea that the the past and increasing capitol dominates the present laborer. 
Also, Marx believes that the bourgeois have a necessary repeating history. He says, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (158). Marx sees the bourgeois dominated society as having created struggle after struggle: “the bourgeois finds itself involved in a constant battle” (167). It is in this way that Marx sees the past as driving the future in a bourgeois society: it is inevitable that the past struggle will repeat itself. From this, Marx makes the assertion that in bourgeois society the past dominates the present.
On the other hand Marx states, “In Communist society, accumulated labour is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer” (171). Marx makes the assertion that in a Communist society, accumulated labour (the “past”) then nurtures opportunity for the laborer (the “present”). The present laborer is more important than capitol. Marx asserts that that aim of the Communists is, “formation of the proletariat into a class [and] overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy” (169). Marx wants a society of workers that are free and dictate their own lives. The worker would be actively shaping their lives and work so that this would in turn command the past.
Furthermore, a Communist society would overthrow the cycle of the bourgeois society struggle. It would be in this way as well that the present would dominate the past as the Communist society would be working towards a new and untried future.
All in all Marx ends up asserting that because the drive to create capitol in a bourgeois society is more important than the worker, then the past is dominating the present. In a Communist society the present worker is freely working to create capitol and it is in this way that the present dominates the past.

Discussion Question: Marx sees Communism society as the present dominating the past. What are the benefits of a society where present dominates the past and what might be the downfalls?

5 comments:

  1. Marlee's analysis of the first quote in her post is very interesting. The repeating past with its inevitable cycle controls the future and present of their society. In relation, the capital obtains more importance than the worker. Marx points out "Capital is, therefore, not a personal, it is a social power" (170). As capital grows larger and large in abundance, it has more importance than the worker producing it and becomes this social power. This social power drives society to continually place the working class as unimportant in comparison to the products of their labor. As Marlee well describes, Marx point outs that the laborer's products benefit and further their existence, which will no longer cause the loss of the self that Marx originally discussed in his earlier writings. Under communism, the worker no longer loses their value as the product becomes more valuable. Allowing the present to dominate the past gives workers the opportunity to benefit from their products, which eliminates the capital of having the social power, but the individuals themselves to have that power. They gain the power to determine their lives and destroy society's control and importance of capital over worker.

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  2. Marlee articulates the meaning of this quote perfectly! Previously, I had had a general understanding of it but wouldn't have been able to explain it very specifically.

    I find the last part of her discussion question especially interesting because it initially seems counterintuitive to associate downfall with such a progressively connoted concept as "present dominating past." One quote that stands out to me, though, is when Marx proclaims that "Communism abolishes eternal truths," striving for "immediate aims...[and] momentary interests" (175, 185). Although it is unhealthy for societies to derive so much power from past, it is also unhealthy to strip them of their backgrounds, their memories, and their steadfast beliefs. Without these things, societies are weak and fleeting because members have no context for themselves. Lacking these things can be just as alienating as being dominated by them.

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  3. In a society where the present dominates the past, it be difficult to be able to do what Marx did and analyze the patterns of history. The concept itself brings up the idea of 1984, where the past is constantly being rewritten to fit what those in power feel the present contains. While such a society would not be stuck in the mire of priveledge and would, presumably, be open to giving second chances, it would also lend out less rewards to those who were less able, such as the elderly, as it would fail to take into account their contributions in the past. In the sense that Marlee analyzed the quote, a society where the individual is more important than creating capital would, in my opinion, have downfalls outweighing the benefits. Marx's argument that people would work in the absence of incentives might work in the case of small groups, like the kibbutz or in small hunter-gatherer type groups, but the whole complexity of society would unravel, setting civilization back millenia. While capitalism drives the demand for luxuries, they are just that -- luxuries for civilization. A lack of incentives would most likely lead to a lessening of buying of luxuries, and as such a deterioration of modern comforts into the necessities for survival.

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  4. As Liezel says, because capitol becomes more important than the worker, workers are essentially dehumanized. Because workers' wages are too low for them to see significant capitol returned through wages, the worker becomes put into a different class that the Bourgeoisie. The society of the past dominating the present "is based on class antagonisms, on exploitation of the many by the few" (170). In Communism, capitol goes to no one because it is converted to common property and therefore, the two divided classes become one - no more oppressor and oppressed. While equality is one disadvantage is that there would be no financial incentives for people to do anything. The advantage of this is that it would never allow the society to return to its previous state of inequality and oppression.

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